Abstract

Background and purpose Vascular cognitive impairment (VCI) affects up to half of stroke survivors and predicts poor outcomes. Valid and reliable
assessement for VCI is lacking, especially for the Chinese population. In 2005, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders
and Stroke and Canadian Stroke Network (NINDS-CSN) Harmonisation workshop proposed a set of three neuropsychology protocols
for VCI evaluation. This paper is to introduce the protocol design and to report the psychometric properties of the Chinese
NINDS-CSN VCI protocols.

Results All three protocols differentiated patients from controls (area under ROC for the three protocols between 0.77 to 0.79, p<0.001),
and significantly correlated with the functional measures (Pearson r ranged from 0.37 to 0.51). A cut-off of 19/20 on MMSE
identified only one-tenth of patients classified as impaired on the 5-min protocol. Cronbach's α across the four cognitive
domains of the 60-min protocol was 0.78 for all subjects and 0.76 for stroke patients.

Conclusions The Chinese NINDS-CSN VCI protocols are valid and reliable for cognitive assessment in Chinese patients with mild stroke.